Tot School - The Letter Y

~James is 29 months~

This week we focused on the letter Yy. We decorated this Y with yellow yarn - James really liked using the big glue bottle, but got annoyed when the glue got on his hands!




He had fun playing with the skein of yarn, too. He kept calling it "Big Dude", which is what he calls Big Bird (Sesame Street) - here he's making Big Dude and Grover dance. :)

I put together this Y tray and left it out all week. Big mistake - the Y's ended up all over the house. :)

We fingerpainted with yogurt and once James realized what he was painting with he declared it was time to "paint tongue!" :)

I happened to find this book at The Barn (Bermuda's version of a Goodwill) for 25 cents! It's part of a series called Alphatales. I found a few more there too, but I had to go here to order the rest.




We had a little yoga session one morning. James had a great time doing this and it was so cute to hear his little voice say "Namaste". I think we'll have to make yoga a regular part of our routine! (couldn't take a pic of this as I was doing yoga with him!)

Another fun activity we did was to hunt around his playroom for yellow things. I'm going to put together an I Spy book for James, an idea I got from 1+1+1=1. We made that Y out of yellow chenille sticks.

Other things we did this week:
We've been going on lots of walks lately now that the humidity is starting to dissipate. Bermuda is one big garden - lots of beautiful flowers, plants and trees every where you look.

We found this giant pod under one of the Poinsettia trees in our neighborhood. We also gathered a baggie of nature items and we spent some time viewing them under a little magnifying glass. James thought this was so much fun we did it a few more times during the week.

Letters

• bottle cap spelling. I found this idea on 1+1+1=1. James did a great job!
• putting small pasta on a word hunt grid I tore out of an activity book. James loves looking at letters and calling out their names, so I thought he'd enjoy this activity. Nope! He thought it was much more fun to roll his *new car over the pasta instead, which of course was totally fine with me. Who knew pasta could be so versatile?!
• playing with letters on a magnetic board

*James is finally showing interest in using the potty! Hooray!! He did a great job this week and got a new toy car as a reward. I know some people don't believe in this method, but it works for us! (I've been collecting these "new" cars from The Barn & garage sales for months!)

Numbers

• this foam number puzzle was a great find at the local dollar store (where nothing is actually a dollar). :)
• (I didn't get a picture of this) One day James completely surprised me by showing me he knows how to subtract! He was playing with some small erasers and began taking one away and counting what was leftover until they were all gone. His math-loving daddy was very proud!

Fine Motor

• Sorting - I realized I have a goldmine of learning tools in my closet - board games! James pulled out this chess board and played with it for almost an hour. He sorted the pieces so each one had its own square, then matched the pieces to their corresponding color square. He kept calling the bishop "yawn" - I guess because the piece has a slit at the top of it that maybe looks like a mouth yawning? :) I love the way kids think!
  
• Sorting - James LOVED this activity. I've had these little birds for who knows how long. I'm in search of some tongs to make this activity more challenging.
  
• Buttoning - trying out the button snake I made. James didn't really get into this activity though, so I set it aside and we'll try again another time. :)

Matching

• colors/textures - this puzzle set has LOTS of pieces and I realized James enjoys this activity more when there are fewer pieces to work with.
• I found this pack of 8 classroom borders at a teaching supply store for $2. I cut up two of the borders and made a matching game out of it. James had so much fun matching the constellations and calling out the animal and color names. I'm glad he's into matching now - I have SO many ideas for this kind of activity!

Matching/Counting/Sorting - James' favorite activity this week was this nut and bolt task. I like that it's self correcting. I thought it would be more challenging for him to match up the size of the nut with the correct bolt, but he mastered it very quickly. After counting them, he lined up the bolts according to size and said, "small, big, VERY big!" :)

We had a really fun week! And, if you're not too bored of this post, there's just a couple more school related things I wanted to share:

Paul and I made a decision this past week and I'm SO excited about it! We decided I'm going to homeschool James for his preschool years. There are several private schools on the island that I've heard are quite good for the primary and junior high years and I feel comfortable sending him to one of them later on. There's also a great Montessori school here too which leads me to my next thought...

Over the past few months I noticed I've been leaning more toward Montessori inspired learning. I've done some reading on it lately and I think the concepts behind the method are wonderful. I also love how the classrooms are set up. I've been trying to introduce more of the Montessori style into our home. There are loads of blogs out there with ideas on how to do this in an easy and economical way. I was referred to this great online store called Montessori Services. I ordered a bunch of stuff from them recently, but since they don't ship to Bermuda (Grandpa is forwarding it down to us - thanks, Dad!), it'll be a while before we see it.

Click on the button to the left for more great Tot School ideas!